p.g. sturges, the shortcut man -- Emphasis on "Short"
Amazon says:
Banes & Noble thinks:
|
Author: p. g. sturges
Title: The Shortcut Man Genre: mystery I'm as wise as the next person to the sort of hype that appears in book jacket cover blurbs, so I knew better than to take an accolade like "...a worthy successor to [Raymond] Chandler" at face value, even if it did come from Michael Connelly. Besides, while I usually like Connelly, I've never claimed to be a Chandler fan. After reading The Shortcut Man, the debut from LA's p. g. sturges¹, I came to this conclusion: if sturges is Chandler's reincarnation, Ray probably should've stayed dead. The titular Shortcut Man is Dick Henry, apparently a private eye of some sort. The ex-cop - Henry was drummed out of LAPD for his over-the-top violence - makes a pretty comfortable living doing other people's dirty work. He gets his name from taking shortcuts around red tape (not to mention laws). Henry is a twenty-first century antihero, the guy you call to get rid of a deadbeat tenant whose mother just died for the sixth time in ten years; get rid of him without bothering to go through the eviction process. Henry is heavily into the three Vs: vandalism, violence, and vigilantism. In accordance with the first-time mystery-writer's handbook, Henry has taken on two cases: the one that involves a modicum of "detecting" finds an unscrupulous churchman running a flimflam on a lovestruck widower, to the detriment of a big hunk of the aging gent's life savings. That occupies Henry for about ten or fifteen pages. The other 209 (yes, this "novel" is only 224 pages) are mostly about Henry lusting after his ex-wife Georgette or doing the horizontal bop with his current squeeze Lynette (what, no Annette? no Yvette?) It's mostly Lynette: sexual interludes are a time-honored means of filling space in hardboiled detective novels, and boy! is there a lot of space-filling going on in The Shortcut Man. Actually, that Lynette, "real" name Judy, coincidentally (gawd, I hate that word) turns out to be the focus of his other, more important (read: "higher-paying") case; the wayward wife of a porn producer who's hired Dick (-snort-) to discover who Judy, aka Lynette, is screwing on the side. When you get down to it, it seems that Judy's banging just about everyone... Let's get this out of the way up front: the "p" in p. g. sturges stands for Preston, same as the author's daddy - legendary (so I'm told) Hollywood director - a relationship to which the younger Sturges manages to allude at least once. That explains a lot - mainly how a writer with what appears to be meager talents can find a publisher for an abbreviated novel that brings a new shade of black to the noir detective. Dick Henry is the kind of guy who hasn't a kind word for anyone and clearly holds nothing but contempt for any passer-by who doesn't share his personal demographic. Women? With luck, a woman could rise to second-class citizenship, but only if she has a spectacular rack and engages in lots of athletic sex with Henry. Minorities? They'd better be female, have a great rack, etc. Henry's only broadminded streaks appear to be the elderly and perhaps gay men (which probably says more about sturges than anything else in the text). Never mind what Connelly (allegedly) said, whether you like Mike or not: p. g. sturges may be a worthy successor to someone, but I doubt it's Chandler. My guess is that the real Raymond Chandler never confused "negative" for "noir" - and that's, unfortunately, a mistake sturges routinely makes. ¹ the author's name is "archy-fied" (a not so subtle reference to archy and mehitabel) not just on the cover but on the title page, library of congress information, and in every other occurrence in the book (except where he refers to his daddy). if he wants to stick to so doofus an affectation, i won't stand in his way - just like i'll let him wear that stupid hat. all content copyright © 2001-present by scmrak
|